Bugs in the bushes

Part of the Countryside Skills course is to be able to identify the different plants and animals living in our local habitats. We found beetles, spiders, slugs, centipedes, millipedes, butterflies, caterpillars and more while bug hunting in the garden - all very exciting!

There are many beautiful wildflowers out at the moment.  We identified cowslips, red campion, white dead nettle, buttercups and cow parsley among others.

We pressed the flowers and then tested our memories (and got the ID guides out again) a few weeks later when they had dried out.

The results have been preserved by laminating and will feature in the students’ portfolios.

Planting trees thanks to the Woodland Trust

This year, we have been very fortunate to receive free trees from the Woodland Trust for Countryside Skills students to plant in Little Wittenham Wood.

We have been planting along the woodland ride, in the areas that were coppiced over the winter.

The purpose of the coppicing is to open up the ride to allow more light in, making it a more pleasant place to walk, but also allowing more woodland plants to grow in the open spaces.  This 'edge habitat' is preferred by many plant, animal and invertebrate species due to the increased light and warmth, close cover and higher quantity of feeding material.

We really enjoyed our sunny days out in the woods.  It was great to think that one day, some of the trees we planted will have grown as big as this mighty oak in the background!

If you are from a school or community interested in planting trees, check out the Woodland Trust's free trees scheme and apply!

Weaving willow hurdles for the wild play area

The hurdles at the end of the wild play area in the Earth Trust Centre garden had reached the ends of their working lives, and have been recycled into firewood for our Big Bale Boiler, which heats the office and Centre buildings.

Our Countryside Skills groups have all been working together to weave a new hurdle fence, and it looks brilliant!

We cut our own stakes from ash trees growing in the wrong place in the Broad Arboretum (they’re rather too good at self-seeding for our liking!), and harvested the willow from the sculptures at Neptune Wood in the autumn.

Many hands make light work! In just one session, students from Brookfields School went from ground level (shown in the picture above) to the sunny half fence below.

We had help from Wallingford School too.

The finished fence:

Hopefully you think the new fence looks as smart as we do. It should at least help to prevent excited Earth School visitors from running onto the farm track during the lunchtime play!

Planting season is upon us!

It’s that time of year – the days are getting longer, the sun is starting to shine, and the air is feeling warmer – it’s time to start planting!

We have a small vegetable patch in the Earth Trust Centre garden which is tended by the Countryside Skills students. We grow a variety of produce to eat at the end of year party!

This year, Brookfields School have started us off with some broad beans, peas, and tomatoes. The beans are in our mini greenhouse, and the tomatoes are on Engagement Co-ordinator Mariel’s south-facing windowsill in the office!

We have also started weeding the vegetable beds to prepare them for planting later in the spring.  Here are Aaron, Kalan and Samuel doing a great job of pulling up the weeds!

Wallingford School lent a hand in the afternoon, bringing over wheelbarrows of mulch to stop the weeds from growing back through. By the end of the day, we had a beautiful looking veg patch ready for spring!

Keep your eyes peeled for progress blog posts as we plant out the vegetables and watch them grow!

A new wood store

We often light fires at Countryside Skills, to stay warm in the winter while we work, to make elderflower cordial over in the summer, or to make blackberry juice in the autumn. We therefore need a good supply of dry firewood. Our Year 11 students from Langtree School have been chopping firewood for us, but ran out of space to store it – they have become very efficient with axes!

A couple of the students offered to build us a new firewood store – and they have!

Oscar and Jack started by clearing and levelling the ground next to the wall, and pruning the overhanging tree to maximise the space available.

They used a pallet for the base, and timber we had leftover from previous projects.  They did all of the planning and measuring out themselves, and demonstrated their proficiency with saws, drills, spirit levels and team work!

In two sessions, they had it finished, complete with a beautiful felt roof! Maybe we’ll make some popcorn on the fire next week to celebrate... Great work boys!

Planting trees with the Sylva Foundation

Part of the Countryside Skills course requires the students to show that they are able to plant a tree in the correct sequence and know how to look after it (i.e. by providing a guard to protect it from nibbling rabbits and strong winds).

This year, we have been very fortunate to be able to work with Gabriel and Jen down the road at the Sylva Foundation, and have planted up a few plots of their Future Forest. We have planted sweet chestnut trees in plots that we will take future Countryside Skills students to coppice in a few years time. The site is very easy to access so it's perfect for some of our less mobile students.

Every single one of our 50 Countryside Skills students planted trees. Well done everyone!

Preparing the ewes for tupping

Although most people might not be thinking about the spring Lambing Weekends just yet, we are already getting prepared. For there to be any lambs at all, the ewes have to spend a month with Billy No Mates the ram.

Our students from Langtree School have been helping Emma the shepherd get the ewes ready!

First we had to gently encourage the ewes into a long pen, so that they could all be treated.

We then wormed them all, gave each ewe a multivitamin, dagged them (removed dirty wool from around their bottoms to prevent flystrike), took down the numbers from their ear tags, and drew on them with a huge crayon so that we knew if we’d missed one!

Last but not least, it was Billy No Mates’ turn. Emma showed us how to trim his feet so that he can run about and do his job properly.

Then it was Oscar’s turn to rub some bright orange paint onto Billy’s chest. This is called a ‘raddle’ and rubs off onto the ewe’s backs when they are ‘tupped’ (mated with). It shows Emma which ewes are likely to be pregnant, and which ewes need to stay with the ram for another cycle.

We all learnt a lot and had a very memorable afternoon! Now we are looking forward to spring and helping Emma with those lambs...

Thank you Emma for letting us come and help you!

New term, new school year, new students!

It seems like only yesterday that we were waving the students off for their long summer holiday, but here we are again, ready for a new year!

Our first group back are from Bishopswood School. There are a few familiar faces, but also some new recruits which is always exciting for everyone.

We started off the course with an introduction to using tools safely, sawing ourselves wooden name badges and drilling holes in the top for the string.

We coloured in our name badges and wrote our names on one side. We’ll use them to hang over the boot pegs in the ‘scout hut’, so that we remember which wellies to put on next time!

When we’d finished making our badges, we went to meet the Earth Trust chickens and give them some food and water.

It was a great start to the term, and we’re looking forward to many more sunny mornings together!

Elderflower cordial

The hedgerows and fields are full of white blossom, and our students have been busy cooking up a tasty treat – elderflower cordial to enjoy at their end of year parties!

We picked the elderflower heads from the garden and brewed them over the campfire with water, sugar, lemons and citric acid. It smelt amazing and we’re looking forward to trying it in a couple of weeks.

Lambing has begun!

The lambing season is upon us, and the lambs are arriving thick and fast ahead of our Lambing Weekends coming up in a couple of weeks (12th-13th and 19th-20th March).

The ewes and their lambs needed moving from one lambing shed into another this afternoon, so our students from Wallingford School very kindly lent a hand.

We carefully carried the lambs over to a new pen, then lined up to create a barrier while Emma the shepherd led the ewes over to their lambs with a feed bucket.

We loved holding the lambs and can’t wait for you all to see them at the lambing festival!

Giving HMS Neptune a hair cut!

Down at Neptune Wood, the Earth Trust has a number of willow sculptures representing HMS Neptune, three cannon balls, a scope and an anchor. Every autumn, the sculptures get a haircut and loose ends woven in, so that they remain neat and tidy.

The Countryside Skills students have done all the work! We’ve learned how to use loppers and secateurs safely, ready for coppicing in Little Wittenham Wood later in the year.

We have bundled up all the willow wands (after tickling each other with them from afar!) ready to use for building hurdles later in the year.

Here are some pictures of Bishopswood School tackling HMS Neptune:

Blackberry picking and fire lighting

The hedgerows are full of ripe blackberries so we’ve been harvesting them and making ourselves a delicious blackberry cordial to drink with our snack when we arrive for Countryside Skills on Friday mornings!

We tried not to eat too many while we were picking them, but it was tricky!

We practiced making fires in the garden to boil our pickings on.

Flow built us a big fire in the fire circle to heat our blackberries on.

We also picked some apples to eat! Yum yum!

Cooper's Oxford Pork

At the Earth Trust, we run a programme called Farm Step which offers land and farm buildings to aspiring farmers who have previously been locked out of the industry by high land prices or lack of skills. We support green businesses who will work together for sustainable land management.

One of our Farm Step tenants is Mark Cooper. Mark keeps his Oxford Sandy and Black pigs in the woods around the North Farm part of the Earth Trust site, where they forage in the undergrowth and encourage rare woodland plants to thrive in the disturbed soil.

Every spring, the Countryside Skills students pay Mark a visit to learn more about the pigs and how Mark and his family look after them. Today, it was the turn of our students from Wallingford School.

You can buy Cooper’s Oxford Pork sausages online or from local farmers markets. We can highly recommend them!